How a small Kentucky town was 10 years ahead of the government

The town of McKee (KY), population 800, was ahead of the curve. The federal government is currently implementing the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, with the goal of connecting every home to high-speed internet by 2030. In McKee, the nonprofit Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative already did that—a decade ago. PRTC has about 55 employees and is based in Jackson County, where McKee is the county seat. PRTC borrowed $45 million from the federal government—in part from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a Great Recession-era stimulus bill. The company also put in $5 million of its own money to connect its two counties for a total of $50 million. The project was completed in 2014. Now, PRTC is expanding its fiber internet coverage into other nearby counties. The company will likely apply for a slice of Kentucky’s $1.1 billion slice of the BEAD funding to complete these builds.